Ships Gravity

Gravity is variable from 0g (weightlessness) to 10g (a 100kg man would “weigh” 1,000kg). It can be varied for any of the decks and sections on the ship. For the sake of argument most humanoids will function fine at anywhere between 0.5g and 1.5g. Movement will be improved by lower g and slowed by higher g. Changing the g values on deck sections could aid your own security and engineering teams and increasing the g value could be used to slow down enemy boarding parties.

We do know which sections of the ship crew members are in when they are working on (engineering) or guarding (security) ships systems. Reducing the g below 0.9 will slow down work based on the following formula.

Percentage Decrease in Efficiency = (0.9-g)*10

Therefore in 0g there would be a 9% increase in the amount of time to complete any given task. If you think tasks would be quicker, think about trying to tighten a bolt when you have no purchase.

Increasing the gravity over 1.1 g will also cause a reduction in efficiency (due to the extra weight involved). The formula for this is:

Percentage Decrease in Efficiency = (g-1.1) * 30.

So at 10g each task would take 267% longer to complete.

Power Requirements

To maintain a 1g gravity over all of the ships decks requires 1MW per 100 square meters. Reducing the gravity to 0.5g will drop the power requirement to 0.5MW. Setting the gravity to 5g increases the usage to 5MW. 

Dev Notes

According to the technical manual in Star Trek, gravity is provided by deck plating under each floor. Now, this is where things start to get dodgy technology wise. If the bottom floor of a Galaxy class starship (Deck 42) is generating 1G of gravity then that gravity would be felt all the way up through the ship on the floors above it (just as the gravity does not vary from one floor to the next of an office block). But, if the 41^st deck was also generating gravity, then it would be cumulative with the floor below and the gravity would be much higher. To counter this anomaly we will say that the deck plating cancels the effects of gravity from the deck below – this means that deck plating in every section can create its own gravitational environment – regardless of what is above or below it.

Each deck plate has an initial health rating of 100%. This can be damaged by weapons fire or collisions. Because of multiple redundancies the plating will continue working until the health drops below 20% - at which point it will stop working and the gravity will revert to 0g.